Day 281: Jim Reece

July 8, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“… we all need our comfort blanket and we need those things that are familiar and safe and secure, but maybe as a place to launch from rather than a place to live in.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Jim, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Jim Reece: Well, I’d love to.  My name is Jim Reece, and I’m a partner with The People Academy, and we coach, consult, and mentor individuals and small business to kind of help them wake up to their potential.  In addition to that, we’re also a leading provider of tools and resources and diagnostics to other helping professionals who do what we do.  We just help them do it better.

Toni: Well thank you for that.

Jim: Sure.

Toni: Jim, when you think about inspiration, who do you inspire, and how do you think that happens?

Jim: It’s really a good question, and listening to the stories over the past nine months and reflecting on that, it’s still a little difficult at times to imagine that, you know?  I think it’s in subtle ways.  You know, I haven’t gotten a letter saying “Dear Jim, thank you for making me who I am today.  Barack Obama” you know?  It doesn’t come at me that way.

And I think to the question of inspiration and motivation, I don’t know if I maybe get those intertwined, but I think that if I look at inspiration kind of as the … you know, motivation is just totally internal and it’s that driver thing, and so I think who I’ve inspired might be those people where I’ve been able to just be able to light a match to that motivation.

I can think of during my work career individuals who may have been in conflict with maybe a personal value versus an organizational goal, or during times of change or personal struggles that they brought into the workplace because they were a little convoluted.  And just by listening and maybe helping to clarify that little bit of conflict in them allowed them to go ahead and pursue … you know, I don’t mean that in terms of giving permission, but it allowed the … it removed the barrier maybe, the thing that was stopping them from going ahead and doing what they knew was right.  So I think maybe in those situations they’re very soft and subtle little personal things that have happened over time.

Toni: When you think about the work that you’ve done or just even the life that you lead, how do you think you help others to explore their potential?

Jim: I think by having a life perspective that says it’s okay, you know, to risk a little bit.  It’s certainly okay to fail, and I think sometimes when you give people permission to fail, it takes a little bit of the stress off of making a decision, whether that be to pursue a certain line of work, or pursue a certain person, to kind of let your heart go.

And to encourage … if I think back in the classroom, and I’ve had the good fortune to be able to teach at the college level for the past eight or nine years, in that setting, you know, it’s funny because it’s mostly adults.  It’s older people, older than traditional college students coming back into school pursuing their bachelor’s degree, and there’s a lot of angst in that.  And it’s funny, because I don’t think of myself in any superhuman role standing in front of the class, but there is that traditional thing, you know, we all grow up raising our hands.  Once you help people feel okay inside their own skin, even okay with what they don’t know — because that’s what we’re here to do is to kind of maybe find something new — there is a little light thing that goes on, and people start to be able to pull together information that’s important to them and start to line that up.  And I think it helps them to, you know, become a little bit more capable.

Toni: So what do you need to be inspired?

Jim: You know, I like that question.  I  was expecting the question to be who inspires and certainly there’s those moments of … I mean, you do.  I mean, this Project is just this incredible piece of humanity, and I don’t know how anyone with a heart and soul couldn’t be moved by it and some of the stories that you’ve brought forth.  So there’s those things that are human, that are significant in some subtle ways.  I like the subtlety.

I like the crystal clear mornings.  I’m looking out the window of my office now at this brilliant blue sky.  It’s unflawed, and you can kind of just look at it and go “Hmm, you know, how do I get to be that blue?  What can I do to bring that kind of light into my life?”

I’m kind of inspired by the little bit of noise that nature gives us.  In that quiet moment when you hear the lake lapping at the shore – that’s kind of the sound; there’s a rhythm to it.  That rustle of a giant oak tree has a different sound than other sorts of trees, and it’s just kind of … there’s a very subtle soundtrack that if you pay attention to it can be a little bit … you know, can kind of fill your tank up a little bit.

Toni: When you find yourself, Jim, with days that maybe you need to, you know, fill your inspiration bucket up so to speak, do you find yourself reaching for tools or resources for yourself personally that you find inspiring that help you to become more inspired?

Jim: Yeah, I think … you know what, sometimes you go look.  Sometimes I’ll go look.  Let me go to a place, even to some of the people you talk to – Danielle LaPorte, who has an extraordinary vision on life and a little bit of sass.  You get a quick charge and just be reminded that you can think a little bit differently, and it’s okay.

Other times … it’s funny, and maybe it’s because somewhere deep inside, maybe even at the subconscious level, you’re open for something or you’re ready for something, or something’s a little bit at conflict, and things will show up.  And whether they’re something online or something that a friend shows you … I got a thing just this morning online from one of my brothers about an old, old relative of the Overholt family, who is on my dad’s side, made Old Overholt Whiskey.  And thinking of the Fourth of July yesterday and missing a little bit of, you know, my original family, and then this thing just shows up which is just a little bit of history, a little bit of reach out by one of my brothers, and it was like “You know what, yeah, there are deep roots and there is legacy there.”

And so, does that make me a little bit more conscious today about my own?  Yeah, yeah.  You kind of can’t help that.  Now, I didn’t go looking for that, but there it was.  And so you’ve got to be open.  You’ve got to take advantage of those things when they roll around.

Toni: Well, I think what I’m gaining from this from you is that it’s being aware of it.  It’s not just getting that piece of email and going “Oh, that’s nice” but being aware that there is still a living legacy that someone had left, and so what is your legacy that you’re living today, but being aware of that.  And so, when you look at your own potential, what do you do that explores your own potential?

Jim: You know, it’s … I don’t know.  I mean it’s … there are situations that come across where you stretch a little bit working on some … I have a very cool cell phone right now.  I have a very cool cell phone, and I’m really proud of that because it’s got like pictures on it, you know, and I used to say when I traded in my original cell phone, it still had a rotary dial on the telephone.  I’m not Mr. Tech 2010.  But, there are some things that I’m doing in terms of the business side in terms of collaborating on finding more efficient, more effective, more brilliant ways of communicating a company message and reaching different audiences, and that’s a little bit of a stretch.

You know, the theme is a quandary, which is it takes … in order to learn how to do something that will save you time, it takes you ten times as long to learn to do it.  So a lot of us, you don’t do it, because it’s like “I can just do it this way, and it’s a lot quicker and I’ll get done with that and I can move onto the next one,” but some of this stuff you have to.  You know, along the way you learn things, you know?  “Hey, I did that, and that’s pretty cool.  Maybe I can now go and do this thing and be a little bit more plugged in.”

Toni: So really you are going through the process of teaching yourself how to do things a little bit differently and not be in that “You know what, I think I’ll stay with the rotary phone today?”

Jim: Yes, absolutely.  And it is … we all need our comfort blanket and we need those things that are familiar and safe and secure, but maybe as a place to launch from rather than a place to live in.  You have to get out there and you have to … I used to travel a fair amount, a little bit internationally and domestically, and I would really kind of be fearful of who I was going to sit next to on the plane.  Some of those flights were 10 hours, 12 hours, and I would dread, I would just dread getting on there, and I would try and get a window seat so that I had someplace to turn in to.  And I didn’t want to engage in conversation because I didn’t know what they were going to say, and what if they were a fool?  What if their breath was bad?

But it’s funny though, and I wonder what I missed and I wondered who I missed, because there was a time or two where that engagement happened, and it was fascinating.  It was everything I thought it wouldn’t be.  So I look back at that with a little bit of regret, and I wonder whose story I didn’t get a chance to hear and what I could have learned maybe from them.

Toni: Well, I think the lesson here for me listening to you is what you said about launching from … it’s best to launch from your comfort zone and not live in your comfort zone on certain things, and I think that that’s a really good piece of advice, and also you can hear it in your interview about who you inspire and how, but also what you need to be inspired and it all is very subtle.  There is a power there to that subtlety, which is helping people to raise their hands, whether that’s by giving them a platform, a voice, and you do that in a subtle manner without hitting them over the head.  So thank you for giving us an interview today on the Get Inspired! Project.

Jim: Well, it’s been my pleasure, and again this is just a remarkable piece of humanity and you are owed a lot.  You’ve done a great thing here.

Toni: Thank you for that.  It’s not me – it’s their stories, but thank you for that.  We will put a link to The People Academy, Inc. at the bottom of the interview.  Thanks a lot, Jim.

Jim: It’s been my pleasure.

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For more information about Jim Reece:   www.thepeopleacademyinc.com

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